George Fetherling looks at his past

Fetherling — an editor, journalist, poet and novelist; the kind of writer, increasingly rare, whose pen doesn’t discriminate — recently published The Writing Life: Journals, 1975-2005, a fly-on-the-wall account of the gossip, parties and scandals of what might be considered the “golden age” of Canadian publishing; Fetherling — who worked in publishing, oversaw the Toronto Star’s books coverage for a number of years and published widely himself — is an ideal guide.

He guides the reporter through the heart of the Annex. Passing Brunswick Ave. conjures up memories of Katherine Govier’s 1985 short story collection, Fables of Brunswick Avenue. “Everybody had [their] first apartment on Brunswick Ave. and painted it all white,” he says. Upon reaching Spadina Road. he continues south, past the grand apartment where Louise Dennys founded Knopf Canada and the lowly rooming house where poet Milton Acorn was “a star tenant.” Finally, he stops in front of 671 Spadina Ave., a ramshackle Edwardian where Dennis Lee and David Godfrey founded House of Anansi Press in 1967; Fetherling, returning to Toronto after a failed stint in New York City, was the company’s first employee. He was paid $35 a week and given a cot in the basement; he had to shake out the bed sheets every night because soot fell from the ceiling every time the No. 77 bus rumbled past the house.

“I could hardly have had a better apprenticeship than that,” he says. “It was a great time to be young.”

Fetherling, who moved to Vancouver in 2001 and now splits his time between the two cities, has not performed an act of revisionist history; The Writing Life is edited by Brian Busby, a literary historian who published a biography of John Glassco in 2011, and who was giving unfettered access to Fetherling’s journals.

“I was not going to censor him,” he says. “I thought that would be churlish and dishonest, and, also, it would ruin the arc of the book.

“I was embarrassed at a lot of the idiotic things that I did and said,” he adds. “I can’t believe that I said to Michael Ignatieff — to his face! — ‘You’re the only person who can come back to Canada and save the Liberal Party [or] it’s going to go extinct.’ He listened politely.”